Marine vehicles, such as power boats, typically travel with a dinghy. Such dinghies are useful for various purposes, such as possible rescue service, ferry service to and from shore or another boat, or water recreation.
Smaller dinghies are often manually powered, typically by means of oars. In contrast, larger dinghies carry generally outboard engines, and some dinghies, particularly those used for fishing, carry outboard electric motors for trolling. Such engines and motors usually mount to motor mounts that are typically part of the dinghies' hulls.
Dinghies can be towed left floating free from their mother boat and towed from place to place as necessary. (For long distance travel, dinghies are generally brought aboard or otherwise secured to their mother boat, above and away from the water.) However, unless properly secured, free-floating dinghies tend to rub against and have low velocity collisions with their mother boat. In addition, free-floating dinghies accumulate scum and other dirt from the water and atmosphere. Most significantly, free-floating dinghies that are left unattended are subject to vandalism and theft, including theft of their expensive on-board equipment, such as engines and motors, as well as related equipment, such as fuel tanks and batteries.
One of the primary reasons that dinghies are left free-floating is that hoisting them aboard their mother boat can be difficult. While the use of davits and power-assisted systems have taken away much of the manual labor from the job of hoisting a dinghy aboard, the separate stowage of even just a dinghy engine or motor can be difficult for two or three people. The reason is that such engines or motors can be relatively heavy and cumbersome and their removal and handoff to individual(s) aboard the mother boat can be precarious. Accordingly, in some present-day dinghy stowage systems, the dinghy is stowed with the engine still associated with the dinghy. In such systems, it is important to stow a fuel-powered engine in a proper stowage attitude. One such attitude is with the power shaft of the engine vertical, which is approximately the same attitude that it has when running, in order to avoid spillage or seepage of the fuel or engine lubricants. Another acceptable engine stowage attitude is with the engine shaft approximately horizontal and the propeller pointed upward.
Quite complicated mechanisms are necessary to assure the proper stowage of a still-attached dinghy engine while stowing the dinghy. One example of such a system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,157,596, in which the dinghy engine is maintained in a space between the stowed dinghy hull and the rear transom of the mother boat. Another example of such a system is a motor mount that includes two or more concentric circular cylinders extending perpendicularly outward from the dinghy transom and having a motor attachment at the end. In this system, the relative positions of the cylinders are maintained by use of a through pin, to prevent the cylinders from rotating relative to one another when undesirable. However, when a dinghy is stowed against a mother boat, one of the cylinders is rotated through an approximate angle of ninety degrees so that the motor is held on the dinghy transom, in its operative attitude relative to the water. Generally, while such stowage systems stow the dinghy engine or motor in the proper attitude, the engine or motor is still subject to vandalism or theft because it is on prominent display.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a method and apparatus for dinghy engine or motor stowage that is easy to use while stowing the engine or motor in a stowage configuration within the dinghy and also allows the dinghy with stowed engine or motor to be stowed adjacent a mother boat while simultaneously providing theft and vandalism protection to the engine or motor.